Christianity Not ChurchianitySt. Luke’s Church, Atlanta

January 13, 2019

TransgenderAt birth, being assigned one gender which doesn’t align with the gender you feel is your true self.

Dr. Howard ThurmanThere is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

“Assigned” fear-based theological narrativeThe Father God overseeing the white, patriarchal, heteronormative, cisgender Trinity up there and out there.

A god with an anger management problem.

Walter BrueggemannInstead of our old categories for the psalms (laments, hymns, royal psalms, etc.) we can see the Psalms in three types • psalms of orientation, • disorientation, and • reorientation.

THE moment of Awareness about my internal, profound DISORIENTATION regarding my assigned narrative conflicting with my narrative given by The Genuine.

The Kent State shootingsThe Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre) were the shootings on May 4, 1970, of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others.

• Some of the students who were shot had been protesting against the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30, 1970. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.

• Hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students.

Privilege Class and Race Protection Solidarity

Thomas Merton, Faith and Violence; New Seeds of Contemplation Violence; New Seeds of ContemplationTrue Self; False Self

“Are you an attorney?”?”

House of Love; House of FearHenri Nouwen, LifeSigns• House of Love; House of Fear

“The House of Love.”

Jesus consistently lived in what Henri Nouwen called, “The House of Love.” His life, ministry, and relationships were an invitation for us to leave our “houses of fear” to join his path of living a love-based life.

Marcus Borg

•Jesus, A New Vision•Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time

•The Heart of Christianity•Jesus and Buddha

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFMThings Hidden;Falling Upward;The Divine Dance;The Enneagram;Daily email meditations;The Living School;“AN ALTERNATIVE ORTHODOXY”

Faith as system of beliefs vs. a loving way of life.

For centuries, Christianity has been presented as a system of beliefs. That system of beliefs has supported a wide range of unintended consequences, from colonialism to environmental destruction, subordination of women to stigmatization of LGBT people, anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, clergy pedophilia to white privilege. What would it mean for Christians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs, but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion, that makes amends for its mistakes and is dedicated to beloved community for all? Could Christians migrate from defining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life?” Richard Rohr

Dr. Valerie Batts, co-founder of VISIONS, Inc.• Identify previously unconscious biases and

misinformation in yourself, in others, and in organizations.

• Communicate more effectively across difference.

• Recognize personal, interpersonal, institutional and cultural barriers to inclusion.

• Understand the ongoing personal effects of historical and contemporary exclusion and oppression, for example, the effects of sexism on both men and women.

• Facilitate change in groups and organizations to create a supportive environment of inclusion.

Hierarchy of Human Worth correlated with

the Image of the White, Male,

“Straight” god. A Christian supported

Cultural, Bigoted Social

Map

White, male, heterosexual, cisgender, ChristianFemaleOf ColorLGBTQ+

•Ethnicity•Gender•Religion•Sexuality•Disability

Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be a part of your revolution”The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it … is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

1993 was the last year in which white Protestants constituted a majority of the population. Today, even when Catholics are included, white Christians comprise less than half the country.

Robert P. JonesRace, Same-sex Marriage, Political Power, Anti-Science

We Are Between the Old Story & the New Narrative“We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves….We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt.”

Charles Eisenstein

A Christianity of Love Over Fear and Oneness over Separateness• “Everything around us is held in a system….

Nature is more flow than fixed, like a choreographed ballet or a symphony. Life evolves toward ever-increasing wholeness and consciousness, and something more—love. . . . Teilhard de Chardin called this “love-energy.”

• “We are accustomed to thinking about love as a human sentiment or emotion, but Teilhard saw love as a passionate force at the heart of the Big Bang universe: the fire that breathes life into matter and unifies elements, center to center. “Love,” he wrote, “is the physicalstructure of the universe.” Sr. Ilia Delio

Teilhard de ChardinCreative energy of the cosmos,Love that unites atoms and humans,That through convergenceCreates new possibilities,Fill human consciousnessWith divine grace.Creative love energy,Infuse the divine milieuWith energizing loveAnd bring all creationto the completion of Omega.

1 John 4: along with others, is a central text for love-based not fear-based Christianity

There, three essential, even foundational claims made:

The first claim is that God is love. More than anything you can say about the Ultimate Power in the world, in life, and in history, the power many of us call God, more than anything you can say about that Power, God is that that Power is the power of love. That is to say that God is the energy of Love. God is a verb not a noun. God is movement – the movement of Love.

1. God is Love2. Love is stronger than fear3. To love God is to love others

• Second, complete love, whole-making love, perfect love overcomes fear. Here we see that the opposite of love is not hate or anything else, although hate may be fear disguised. But the opposite of love is fear and that love is more powerful than fear.

• Thirdly, this has foundational implications in how you treat other people – all other people. 1 John, chapter 4 says that if you say you love God whom you have not seen while abusing, hating, mistreating other people (and creation) whom you have seen, you are a liar. To love God is to love other people (neighbor as your self. God love and neighbor-love are inextricably intertwined)